Chapter 42 Ryan

CHAPTER 42 RYAN

February 2007

Los Angeles

My plan for our last night together in Los Angeles was to ask Cass to join me in Charleston for filming. Janie had rented me an old, old house in the heart of downtown. The kind with a courtyard and sloped floors and exposed beams from the 1800s. Cass could write during the days. Take walks along the water. See the history. Asking her to come to Charleston with me wasn’t a marriage proposal, but still, I wanted a setting for us that was more memorable than takeout on my patio.

We’d finally gotten out of bed for a snack—it was almost lunchtime—when I mentioned possibly going out for dinner. I could tell that Cass wanted to like the idea. So, I pressed.

“It’s a local spot, not some scene-y place,” I said, remembering the night at Jack’s when Sarah had stood me up. I was excited to create a better memory there. “I’ll wear a baseball hat and we’ll be super low-key.”

Cass was standing in front of the open refrigerator looking for something to eat. She decided on a handful of grapes. I motioned for her to share, and she held them protectively against her chest. “I don’t think Janie would approve,” she said. “Grapes have sugar in them.”

“Speaking of things Janie wouldn’t approve of,” I said, pleased with myself at the segue, returning us to the topic of dinner. “Jack’s, tonight, please? We’ll get a table in the corner, there are plants everywhere. Just friends out for dinner. Nobody will see us, I promise.”

“You’re reckless,” Cass said. It sounded playful. I knew I was bending her to my will. What I had on my side was an understanding of her deep desire to know fame. And because I still didn’t know the full picture of what had happened with her, I couldn’t calculate the cost of exposure.

I grabbed her free hand and spun her into me. I pressed my body against hers. “Please, for me, I need to get out of this house,” I whispered against her slightly parted lips.

“You’re going to wear a baseball cap? And we’ll be discreet? And you absolutely promise nobody will find out?”

I could do no such thing. But I said yes anyway.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. An hour before our reservation, Cass went to get changed. I was in the living room, and I watched her walk down the hall. She must have felt my eyes on her because she glanced back, saw me looking, and raised her eyebrows twice, quickly. Oh my god, this woman. I wanted her again. I looked at my wrist, at an imaginary watch, and said, “No, definitely not enough time for what I’m thinking.”

She gave me a look like, My interest is piqued .

When she came out of the bathroom a half hour later, I heard her power up my desktop computer.

“We good for dinner at seven?” I called down the hallway.

She came into the kitchen a minute later, and I sensed something had shifted. Her mind was a thousand miles away. She was standing by the counter looking at her phone. I came up behind her, put my hands in her pockets, my lips on her neck. “So here’s what I’m thinking,” I whispered, trying to reattach us to the earlier thread of me wanting her before dinner.

“It’s okay.” She spun to face me; my hands came out of her pockets. “We should get going.”

I wore my Kansas Jayhawks hat with the brim bent around my eyes. Actors always go out with Dodgers or Yankees hats. It makes me laugh. As soon as anyone sees someone with one of those caps in LA the first thing they do is look closer like, Wait, which famous person is that? But a Jayhawks hat? Nobody is double-taking a team from the Midwest.

Jack’s had the best Chianti and eggplant parmesan, which I told Cass even though I would order a seltzer and the house salad with dressing on the side. The menu was small and printed in cursive, which represented the vibe of the place. Farmhouse tables, family photos on the walls, plants in every corner, low lighting. We were tucked into a corner, and I was feeling good about the whole thing.

Cass still seemed distant, but I told myself that made sense. Being out together meant more eyeballs on us, which meant someone might recognize me, and next they’d wonder who the woman across from me was. They’d wonder if she was someone they should know. Let me remind you: Los Angeles is a big city, but Hollywood is a small town. We were taking a calculated risk, but if Sidney Collins had done her job like she said she had, then there was no way one dinner with me would bring the whole Cate Kay house of cards down.

“We made it,” I said, smiling. She was wearing a green V-neck T-shirt. I loved her collarbone. I wanted to reach across the table and run my fingers along its edge.

“We did,” she said, fumbling with her napkin.

Our waiter appeared, welcoming us. Young guy, slicked blond hair. I was trying to keep my eyes hidden under my hat. I was getting the feeling that he thought I was somebody. People aren’t as discreet as they imagine. There’s the whisper to someone else. Then a little while later, when that person thinks enough time has passed, they look your way for a few seconds too long. Then they offer an affirmative to their friend, and then there’s this buzz that emanates from their corner of the world. You just pray they aren’t going to come over and ask if you are so-and-so.

“I’m surprised,” Cass said when he left.

“What are you surprised about?” I was trying to fully tune in to her, but my attention was split. My eyes followed the server back to the bar where, yup, he was whispering into the ear of the bartender. Fuck , I thought, he’s going to call it in—make a buck on us . Coming here was stupid after all. But romance is risk.

“Ryan?” Cass was looking at me strangely. “What’s going on?” I pried my attention away from the bar. I needed to let it go. I couldn’t control what this guy did. “Nothing, we’re all good,” I said. “So, what are you surprised about?”

“You,” she said, and then I actually did forget about the server and bartender. Now Cass was talking about us —my favorite topic.

“What about me?” I said as seductively as possible. Were we flirting now? I could do that.

“I’m actually serious,” she said. “I thought you wanted to meet me for the movie. Because you wanted more insight into the book, the characters, and all that?”

I leaned back. I had a moment of panic that we were shooting the movie soon and Cass was right, I hadn’t done my standard prep work. Too much sex and big, bold cabernets and late nights listening to music.

“That is why I asked to meet you,” I said. “At least, that’s what I told my agent and Janie so they’d try to make it happen. But it was something else, too, this thing I noticed in the book.”

“What thing?”

“A lot of people here—in Hollywood I mean—are convinced that the author of The Very Last is a man. Mostly, probably, because men assume all successful things are done by men, but also because of the premise of the book: New York City, its destruction, the grittiness of life in The Core. It’s a loud premise. And men tend to blow things up more than women.”

“But both main characters are women and one of them is gay,” Cass said.

“A ‘smart’ move to ‘balance’ the story”—I did air quotes around smart and balance and used my best big-time studio executive voice to let her know how logic inside this twisted business worked.

“However,” I said, putting my right elbow on the table and lifting my pointer finger, “you have that one small exchange between Samantha and Jeremiah, from back when they are in high school—the misunderstanding over the word ‘girlfriend’? When I read that, I knew.”

I was certain she would be proud of my insight and thrilled that I’d read her work so closely. But instead, she said, “You knew what?” And there was an edge to her voice, and she was leaning back in her chair. I tilted my head, confused. Even sharper now, she said, “What did you think you knew?”

I replayed my previous few sentences, scanning them for errors, for a reason for this abrupt shift in energy. I couldn’t locate my misstep, which set my heart bouncing. My response came out slowly, a stutter. It was mostly just I, um, I, I. Before I could get out a complete sentence, which I’m not even sure was going to happen, Cass jumped in with another question. She was leaning forward and lowered her voice as she said, “Why did you invite me here?”

Dinner had gone off the rails so quickly. I was tongue-tied. “What’s… happening?” I hoped my bewilderment came across as sincere.

She looked nervously around the restaurant, then stared into her lap.

“Cass,” I said sharply, hoping to regain her attention. Out of the corner of my eye I saw our waiter returning with drinks. I tilted my head from him just slightly, so he could neither confirm nor deny that I was the movie star he suspected me to be.

A tall glass, dewy with condensation, now sat on the table. And the bubbles of my seltzer were rapidly rising to the surface—a perfect metaphor for whatever the fuck had happened to this conversation. Images of the previous month flashed through my mind. I reassessed them, wondering if they’d felt differently to Cass than they did to me. Had I ignored her unease? I’d heard horror stories of what fame could do to your sense of entitlement—entitlement to things, yes, but also to people. Had I done that with Cass; was my self-awareness shifting out from under me?

She was rigid across from me. Her head was level, but her eyes were down. I reached my hand across the table, palm up, and said, “Babe?” I dipped my head slightly to try to pry her eyes upward.

I watched her hands, willing them toward mine, but they remained in her lap. She lifted her eyes. They were filled with tears. My chest swelled. A misunderstanding is all this was. She was coming back to me. Then she swallowed and said, “Don’t, please.” She pushed back in her chair, stood.

“Where are you go—?”

“I have a red-eye back to New York. I’ll send for my things.” She dropped her napkin on the table, a blur of white that I stared at for a second, my brain foggy.

Then Cass was walking away, and I was still processing what she had said. She had a plane booked for that night? Was this some kind of last-minute plan, or backup plan, or the plan all along? I stood and followed her through the restaurant. I was calming my energy and keeping my head down. The only thing that draws attention quicker than a celebrity is public drama. Cass was walking quickly, dodging tables. I inadvertently made eye contact with our server and was about to give him a fake reassuring smile, but his eyes darted away. Uh-oh . I knew that look.

“Cass, wait,” I whisper-shouted. “Wait, wait, wait.”

But she was pushing through the front door. Now that I’ve had time—years, actually—to dwell on it, of course I shouldn’t have followed her outside. But that day was a slippery slope of bad decisions. “That’s her! Hey, Ry, over here!”

From the waiter’s sheepish look, I had anticipated dozens of cameras. But it was just two guys. I made a mental note to call Janie as soon as I got home. But first I needed to get to Cass, talk to her, bring her back to me.

A black SUV pulled onto the street and slowed down, stopping up the block from the restaurant. Cass picked up speed, walking toward the back seat door. I was dumbfounded at the coordination—where had this car even come from? How did Cass know it was arriving, and when? She reached the door handle and pulled it open, stepping up into the car.

For a moment I thought she was going to get in without even turning to look at me. But at the last second, her arm gripping the door, she lifted herself up, her chin resting on top of the door’s black frame, and glanced back. And I swear to God, she mouthed, I’m sorry. But I don’t know, I just don’t know.